The adrenaline of the postseason will reach its highest levels today in Cuban baseball, when the voice of playball launches the Sancti Spíritus-Pinar del Río and Las Tunas-Matanzas duels.
Although with different realities, these four payrolls settled the regular phase of 75 games and now face a stage of the quarterfinals to the best of seven games, in order to obtain the tickets for the prelude to the crown discussion.
In the square meters of their fence, the José Antonio Huelga stadium, the Roosters from Sancti Spiritus will try to maintain the good feelings and exhibit the power that left them at the top of the standings, with 45 wins and 30 setbacks, although they will not be able to trust themselves against one of the “historic teams” on the island.
The troop of manager Eriel Sánchez, former Olympic champion catcher in Athens 2004, will have -among other details- the locality factor on their side, a plus in this type of circumstance, but the Vegueros from Pinar del Río (40-35) will not give up after agreeing dramatically to the playoffs.
The other “dual meet” presents a different scenario, as the Las Tunas Lumberjacks (43-32, runners-up) and the Matanzas Crocodiles (40-35, seventh) will collide for the third consecutive year in the postseason and the desire for revenge will be skin deep in the Julio Antonio Mella park.
Commanded by the mentor Pablo Civil, king of the patio in 2019, the people from Las Tunas will receive the current subtitles at their home with the aim of reversing the unfavorable balance against the opponents on duty (3-7) in rounds of direct eliminations.
Both matches will start simultaneously at 2:00 pm local time. Those teams will have their second matches tomorrow, when the Granma (43-32)-Industriales (41-34) and Mayabeque (42-33)-Ciego de Ávila (41-34) matches will start at the Mártires de Barbados and Nelson Fernández stadiums, in that order.
With the contest of 16 teams and Granma as the exponent monarch, the 61 National Baseball Series had its opening day last January, under the all-against-all format and eight places in dispute heading to the playoffs.